Belize Destination Article

BY ELAINE LEMBO
BAREBOAT CHARTERING
A catamaran charter
through the reefs and
atolls of this western
Caribbean country
reveals a land of
plenty, both past and
present and above
and below the
surface of the sea
Purrfect, a Fontaine Pajot
Bahia 46 catamaran, was
indeed perfect for a weeklong
charter with friends among
the outer reefs and atolls of
Belize. The open-air markets
of San Pedro (inset, top)
carried an abundance of
fresh fruits and vegetables
for last-minute provisioning.
The High Temple (center)
was one of three Mayan ruins
at Lamanai the charterers
visited. Logger George
(bottom) is snorkeling over
stands of coral instead of
felling stands of trees.
34
C RU I S I N G WO R L D
Y
country whose nefarious past—pirates, shipwrecks,
and stolen gold
doubloons—mimics your present,
even if it’s in a
backward sort of way. For me, the country with the shady past is Belize, and the
present includes a boyfriend who thinks
he’s a pirate. Thanks to its locale on the
western border of the Caribbean Sea, its
distance from the seat of European sovereignty, and its nearly 200-mile-long
barrier reef, the former British Honduras enjoys a freewheeling history. In
the 1600s, British pirates who’d wrecked
on the reef camped out on the coast and
the cays, plundered Spanish galleons,
and started cutting wood. While Spain
RICK MARTELL (INSET, BOTTOM), JENNIFER BALCH
Bountiful
Belize
AU G UST 2002
OU GOT TA LOVE A
C RU I S I N G WO R L D
AU G UST 2002
was preoccupied with other happenings
on the Spanish Main, the Brits dug in. It
all culminated with the Battle of St.
George’s Cay in 1798: The Spaniards
thought they’d investigate what the
Brits were up to, but the woodcutters,
called Baymen, drove them out once
and for all. Today, every September 10,
Belizeans celebrate the Battle of St.
George’s Cay as a national holiday.
That the buccaneers became loggers is
a bit of trivia that made an impression
on me a dozen years ago when I moved
in with Rick, a sailor who loved wooden
boats, made his living in the logging
business, and regularly reminded his
happy-hour friends that he was bailing
out of Vermont and running off to Belize. It made little difference to him that
the indiscriminate and destructive
chopping of logwood and mahogany
35
88˚ W
18˚ N
110ºW
100ºW
90ºW
rou
te
ct's
Purr
fe
Lighthouse
Reef
Blue Hole
Half Moon Cay
Hat Cay Long Cay Pass
Bluefield
Range
Dangriga ●
17˚ N
Columbus Reef
Tobacco
Cay
Nautical Miles
0
G
U
LF
wear, and walked shoeless to BC’s Beach
Bar. This open-air tiki hut was the type of
casual, laid-back place in which any escapee from city life could take comfort.
Thanks to the advice of a charter-base
staff of Belizeans and foreigners who’ve
long lived there, we settled on a plan. It
included room for a leisurely sail to the
outer atolls and to dive and snorkel the
Blue Hole, inside Lighthouse Reef, visit
the Half Moon Cay Natural Monument
Reservation, enjoy effortless broadreaching while sunbathing on the tramp,
buy dinner from the local fishermen, and
swim with the sharks and the stingrays.
The Barrier-Reef Border
You’re either in or you’re out, but we’re
not talking fashion, social trends, or politics. In Belize, the size of New Hampshire,
the only time anyone cares whether
you’re in or you’re out is when you’re
talking about the barrier reef, a jagged
mass of coral about 15 miles off the coast
that runs south from the north tip of
Ambergris Cay to the Gulf of Honduras.
The entire reef, which runs from the
Purrfect’s crew dinghies ashore for a midday picnic at stunning Rendezvous Cay
after a screaming trade-wind reach from
the Tobacco Cay fleshpots.
Glover Reef
Placentia ●
Village
Sapodilla Cay
Turneffe Islands
Northern Cay
Sandbore Cay
Southern
Lagoon
Spanish
Lookout
Cay
Rendezvous
Cay
80ºW
our French-built catamaran at the Tortola Marine Management (TMM) base in
San Pedro for a weeklong charter. I wondered how Belize, easily reached via air
from Miami, Houston, and Dallas, would
stack up as a chartering destination
against the Virgins and the rest of the
eastern Caribbean.
With us on this trip were those happyhour friends from the north country—
George, a logging pal of Rick’s, and his
wife, Kara, who runs an accounting firm.
Life’s been good to the buddy woodsmen,
and they’ve abandoned plans to live like
outlaws and chop down the rain forest.
Their new, more eco-friendly scheme,
hatched on the charter, is to start a venture called Belize Knees, which would let
them wander the forest and search for
unions of limb and trunk that yield perfect angles—natural knees—for boatbuilding. Whether this was a concrete
plan or whimsy was difficult to decipher.
Our merry band also included Jennifer,
a photographer, and Pat, the handsome
captain of a Bill Tripp-designed raceboat
out of Stamford, Connecticut. We were a
captain-heavy crew (Rick also skippers a
racing vessel), yet none of us had ever
sailed a cat.
On the ground in San Pedro, the sandy
lane leading to TMM felt pillowy-soft to
our flight-swollen feet. When the TMM
facility opened in 1997, it was the only
charter operation in Belize. We met some
of the staff, oohed and ahhed over Purrfect, our Fontaine Pajot Bahia 46, claimed
cabins, dumped gear, peeled off winter
36
Belize City
Sergeant's Cay
HONDURAS CARIBBEAN
SEA
NICARAGUA
Harry Jones Point
St. George's Cay
●
BELIZE
GUATEMALA
Cay Caulker
Grand Bogue
Creek
O
F
HO
15
N
R
DU
30
AS
Bareboat waters
Skipper required
northeast tip of the Yucatán Peninsula in
Mexico to Sapodilla Cay, in southern Belize, is more than 350 nautical miles long;
the Belizean portion, more than 180
miles, is the longest unbroken living reef
in the world. To the west of the reef, on a
limestone shelf, sit shallows that range
from three to 70 feet deep, but it’s 15 feet
in enough areas to accommodate cruising sailboats. Prevailing winds clock primarily from northeast to southeast, yet
boats are protected from the wave action
of the open Caribbean. To the east, starting eight miles out, are three coral
atolls—Turneffe, Lighthouse, and Glover;
these rarities in the Western Hemisphere
have base formations tied to the tectonicplate movements that created the reef.
Alas, the hulks of old shipwrecks littering the reef tell a sobering tale. Thus,
bareboaters with TMM (and with The
Moorings, which opened a base in Placentia Village in 2001) aren’t allowed to
sail beyond the barrier reef. Most TMM
charterers follow the route outlined in
purple marker on charts from Freya
Rauscher’s Cruising Guide to Belize and
C RU I S I N G WO R L D
AU G UST 2002
JENNIFER BALCH
PACIFIC
OCEAN
Ambergris Cay
Barrier reef
CUBA
20ºN
10ºN
E
Miami
Gulf of
Mexico
Lamanai
I Z
ATLANTI C
O CEAN
Houston
MEXICO
●
B E
L
UNITED STATES
30ºN
San Pedro ●
SHANNON CAIN
long ago gave way to a national philosophy of conservation, with more than 40
percent of Belize’s land preserved to protect the rain forest and wildlife. My pirate
got his captain’s license, together we got a
schooner, and then we ran off, all right—
not to Belize but to the British Virgin Islands, where we worked and played the
charter game.
These memories and more rushed in as
our Tropic Air puddle jumper droned toward Ambergris Cay, where we’d meet
Mexico’s Caribbean Coast, copies of which
are on each boat. The bareboat-cruising
area, which extends to the southernmost
cays outside Placentia Village (where
TMM plans to expand), is about 140
square nautical miles—more than
enough chop-free, easterlies-swept area
to keep diehards content. As we wanted to
sail to the outer atolls for half of our trip,
we hired a local skipper named Horace,
who’s also a Belize tourism board-licensed guide and a dive master. We
planned to part company with him once
we re-entered the reef.
The afternoon sail to our first overnight
stop, teeny Sergeant’s Cay, about 34 miles
to the south, gave us a chance, with Horace’s guidance, to get used to the cat and
navigate the waters. With easterlies pumping us along at eight and a half knots
under main and genny, we passed Cay
Caulker while taking in the island’s vegetation, still brittle, gray, and leafless with salt
damage from Hurricane Keith in 2000.
The sevens and 10s on the depth
sounder were a bit nerve-racking until I
got used to them—we used to work
aboard a monohull with a nine-foot
draft—and I also had to get comfortable
with the branches that regularly stuck up
out of the water, some indicating lobster
traps, others, makeshift channel markers.
And as we sailed among the mangrove
cays and past historic St. George’s Cay, we
gained renewed appreciation for using all
the tools—GPS, charts, compass, and, of
course, local knowledge—to figure out
where the heck we were when all the
landmasses looked flat and low.
C RU I S I N G WO R L D
AU G UST 2002
After dinner that first night at
Sergeant’s, while the waxing moon fought
with the cloud cover for stage time, the
surf crashed against the nearby barrier
reef, which excited me, as it also reminded me of being a kid in the western Pennsylvania hills, holding a conch shell up to
my ear, and straining to hear the ocean.
Only now, this sound was for real, and
while lying in my berth as Purrfect swayed
at anchor, I felt this might be a prelude to
something big—the atolls, perhaps.
Next morning, out came pareus and
Hawaiian shirts as the crew, having fallen
asleep right after dinner and arisen early,
began easing into tropical-escape mode.
We weighed anchor, and Purrfect motored through a cut in the reef. Now we
were off soundings, in a blue sea whose
floor in places lay more than 1,000 feet
below. In the vicinity of the atolls, areas
more than 10,000 feet deep have been
T H E
M A Y A N
recorded. Yet none of these abysses lie far
from the green shallows we’d just left.
Herein lies a major difference between
the western and eastern Caribbean. The
Leewards and Windwards, with few exceptions, form a visible chain of volcanic
points of reference. Here in the west,
most of the interesting topography lies
beneath the surface—an uninterrupted
vastness. From Purrfect’s deck, we mainly
saw low mangrove vegetation and the
flat, palm-studded cay, though the most
tantalizing clues were white slivers of surf
breaking amid the blue, hinting at a limestone forest beneath and reminding me
that nothing ever is as it appears.
Turneffe Islands, about seven miles east
from Sergeant’s, is the largest of the three
atolls, running roughly north-south for
30 miles, then east-west for about nine.
We entered through Grand Bogue Creek,
one of half a dozen veins that course
C O N N E C T I O N
Belize lays claim to Central America’s earliest Mayan settlements (dating from 2000 B.C.),
including Altun Ha, Xunantunich, and Lamanai. The last of these is considered the most important site in the northern part of the country because the Mayans occupied it continuously
from 1500 B.C. until the 16th century. The Lamanai excursion, which leaves the TMM dock in San Pedro at 7 a.m.,
gave us a full day of sightseeing, including a nature and
bird-watching tour by motorboat up the New River, where
we had the chance sighting of the rare giant jabiru “turk”
stork in its nest.
Consult TMM for cost and details about visiting Belize’s
Lamanai’s Mask Temple
ruins as well as those at Tikal, in Guatemala. Per-person cost
for Lamanai, excluding tips, was $125 and included a delicious homemade lunch served on china.
If, aside from sailing, your interests tend more toward birds, hiking trails, and wildlife, check
with TMM and Destination Belize, the publication of the Belize Tourism Industry Association
(800-624-0686, e-mail btb@travelbelize.org or write Ulrich Communications Corp., 1995 N.E.
150th St., Suite 107, N. Miami, FL 33181, fax 305-947-6410, e-mail dbz@ulrichcom.net). E.L.
37
We’d go ashore to picnic and explore on
remote cays where, four centuries earlier,
British pirates whose ships had wrecked
on the reef camped out and plundered
Spanish galleons.
nearly 500 feet deep—could top this.
Intent on having fresh fish for dinner,
we motored the short distance through
Long Cay Pass and anchored off Half
Moon Cay with a view of the eastern side
of Lighthouse Reef, the white breakers,
and the wreck of the cargo ship Elksund.
We were 70 miles from Belize City, the
farthest east in the Caribbean we’d ventured so far, and it was all fine by me.
Ever the hunter-gatherer, Horace
donned fins and mask and grabbed a gaff
hook, and I deployed the kayak. While I
kayaked, he swam, every once in a while
pointing out a blacktip shark or puffer
fish. When he struck pay dirt, he’d signal,
I’d paddle over, and he’d plop a spiny lobster or shiny conch in the bow. I paddled
his booty back to Purrfect, and he cleaned
the seven lobsters and seven conch off the
starboard transom. (See “Captain Cook’s
Secret Ingredient,” page 33.)
For George and Kara, it doesn’t get any
better than winding down on the tramp of
a catamaran, on flat seas with a steady
breeze, bound for yet another tropical isle.
boobies and their fuzzy young plus their
interloping neighbors, the magnificent
frigate birds, greeted us dispassionately. I
could have touched any bird with my
hand. Red pouches beneath the bills of
the frigate birds swelled in a courtship
display, followed by the confused fluttering and flapping of wings (ah, love). The
sun was nearly down; the moon and romance were on the rise.
A Natural Monument
38
C RU I S I N G WO R L D
AU G UST 2002
JENNIFER BALCH
early-morning cloud cover. It was time to
set sail for Long Cay, at the southwest corner of Lighthouse Reef, and pick up a
mooring. The reefs and walls off the
western side of Long Cay and off Hat Cay,
farther south, offer some of the best diving visibility in all of Belize, starting from
25 to 30 feet beneath the water surface. To
prepare his certified divers for the splendors of the Blue Hole, Horace took Rick
and Pat on a dive at a wall. Kara and I
snorkeled, and Jennifer snapped pictures.
Simply by skimming over the crest of
an underwater wall, we’d seen jacks, parrot fish, barracuda, purple wrasses, blue
tangs, cowfish, sergeant majors, and yellowtail snappers.
While I snorkeled, I traced the divers’
bubbles until I could see Horace, Rick,
and Pat hovering over some stingrays.
They’d also seen puffer fish, black coral,
and purple sea fans, which made me
wonder how the Blue Hole, the world-famous sinkhole—1,000 feet across and
Back Inside
ONNE VAN DER WAL
through the mangroves into Southern
Lagoon. With Horace at the helm, we traversed the shallow lagoon, emerging at
Harry Jones Point, slowing in the eerie
quiet whenever Horace found life among
the underwater shadows. “Look, spotted
eagle ray!” he said, throwing the twin engines into neutral, then pointing, directing us in little more than a whisper.
“There’s a lot of lobster in here,” he
added, “but you won’t see sailboats in this
area, only fishermen. Just turn around
and tell me where we came in.” I looked
astern and had no idea.
Moving forward, I jumped onto the
cat’s massive trampoline. The loggers,
George and Rick, were sunning themselves on the bow seats at the stem of each
hull, and I swear I detected them glancing
covetously at the curvaceous wood and
mangrove vegetation along the shore.
A Caribbean Sea without the steep
chop of Sir Francis Drake Channel was
ahead. Brilliant sun had burned off the
Purrfect was the only boat at Half
Moon, so we stayed overnight at its sole
dock and readied fenders and lines. We
watched as the tiny island—its two lighthouses at the east end, a miniature rain
forest at the west—came into full view,
glowing in the setting sun. “Oh—my—
God,” an awestruck Kara exclaimed.
Once docked, Horace shooed us off the
boat: “Hurry, hurry, you need to see the
boobies before sundown!” We headed for
the trail lined with conch shells. Half
Moon Cay Natural Monument—Belize’s
first National Park, protected in 1982—is
also a World Heritage Site. Its 45 acres include the cay, four miles of Lighthouse
Reef, part of the inner-reef lagoon, and
deep water beyond the reef. Endangered
loggerhead and hawksbill turtles lay eggs
on the cay beaches. Of the 98 resident
bird species, the red-footed booby is
among the most valued. This is because
the colony’s more than 4,000 adult birds
are characterized by white plumage instead of the more common dull brown.
As we walked to the observation tower,
a swollen moon began its climb into the
sky, the breeze picked up, palm fronds
slapped against tree trunks, and the forest
was consumed by flapping wings,
whoops, shrieks, screeches, and the crackling of hermit crabs on the move.
For 360 degrees, thousands of nesting
Cruising the atolls, I liked the feeling of
having a whole ocean to ourselves, and so
I was surprised when the crew started
making noises about finding a place to
get a good, cheap drink. So the next day,
with the winds from the south on the
nose, we motorsailed southwest, toward
Tobacco Cay, where the Reef ’s End Lodge
had just the year before built a new bar
and restaurant on stilts near the cay’s tip.
We let the mainsail flake into its lazy
jacks, slowed the engines, puttered in
along the bottom of hook-shaped
Columbus Reef, and anchored. Tobacco
Cay, with its plentiful groves of 80-foot
palm trees, assortment of lodges, and
guests strolling the shore, was the closest
thing to civilization we’d seen in days.
After the fishermen and lighthouse
keepers we’d met at the atolls, finding
folks just like us was a bit of a letdown. A
honeymooning couple from Texas had
taken over the bar and were measuring
out the jigger-sized glasses; vacationing
members of a teachers association were
C RU I S I N G WO R L D
AU G UST 2002
chatting to one another farther down the
deck. Jennifer and I strolled barefoot in
the soft sand past the lodges. We found
another bar, which served cheaper, yet
bigger and better, drinks and—eureka!—
had candy bars behind the counter. “For
emergencies,” said the bartender.
There are things I still miss about the
B.V.I., like sailing for hours with relentlessly consistent, perfectly positioned
trades in sparkling waters—navigation
mostly line of sight, air so clean the oxygen makes you giddy. I wanted this feeling before I left Belize. So, the next morning, we took advantage of 25 knots of
southeast trades and headed north from
Tobacco Cay, inside the reef, on a starboard reach along TMM’s purple route.
Instead of poking along and stopping, I
wanted to zip past anchorages and keep
on going. In no time, we were parallel
with Dangriga, on the mainland, and
could see the mountains off to the west.
An occasional local fishing sailboat,
powerboat, or bareboat popped onto the
horizon, yet each was gone as quickly as it
appeared. Secure in the main channel
and waters 50 to 60 feet deep, we skittered
along, with Rick and Pat at the helm pretending to race with each boat they spotted and George, Kara, and me lounging
on the foredeck and trampoline. As the
mangrove vegetation of Bluefield Range,
20 miles north of Tobacco Cay, came
into view, talk turned to a late lunch stop
Charter Resources
To contact TMM for details about chartering
throughout the Caribbean, turn to page 53.
For Cruising World Adventure Charters, see
page 62 and the inside back cover.
at Rendezvous Cay, then more sailing.
Before we’d relieved Horace of his duties at Tobacco Cay, he’d urged us to make
an overnight stop just north of Water Cay
to visit his relatives at Spanish Lookout
Cay, known in these parts as Victor Forman’s Cay, 10 miles north of Bluefield.
Victor Forman wasn’t just the namesake
of the island, Horace explained. Victor
Forman had made the island. Huh?
“You take a dredge and you dump
some money into it,” said Victor’s son,
also named Victor. In the early 1980s,
they transported equipment and built up
the spit, which had been leveled by hurricanes, with sand, gravel, and cement. It
cost $15,000 to $20,000 Belizean (about
half that in U.S. currency) to finish the
project. The Formans built cottages for
themselves and vacationers. Today, they
fish for a cooperative and also sell their
catch to visiting sailors. The government
would soon issue to the family the title to
this lovely, palm-treed patch.
Later, Victor, some friends, and a few
family members visited with us aboard
Purrfect, and the evening was as full and
relaxing as the day had been. I sat on the
foredeck, staring at the white, full moon
and the silver shimmer it cast on the
water. Ahead of us lay half a day of sailing,
a swim with the sharks and rays at SharkRay Alley in the Hol Chan Marine Reserve, and an inland tour of the Mayan
ruins. And, of course, some serious sidelong glances at the graceful mahoganies of
the rain forest. As I took in the mellow
mood aboard, I knew this had been a trip
whose good vibes would linger long after
it ended.
Elaine Lembo is CW’s managing editor.
39